Ladon

Ladon may refer to:

Ladon (river)

The Ladon (modern Greek: Λάδωνας, Ládonas) is a river in the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece. It features in Greek mythology. It is a tributary to the river Alfeios, which empties into the Ionian Sea.

Course

The Ladon rises on the western slope of the Aroania mountain, near the village Kastriá, Lefkasi municipal unit, Achaea. It flows south, receives its left tributary Aroanios, flows along Kleitoria and turns southwest near the Arcadian border. It flows through the artificial Ladon Lake, and turns south again near Dimitra. It flows into the Alfeios 3 km southeast of the village Tripotamia.

Mythology

The river was among those mentioned by Hesiod in Theogony; they were "all sons of Oceanus and queenly Tethys" for, according to the image of world hydrography common to the ancients, the fresh water that welled up in springs came from the underworld caverns and pools and was connected with the salt sea. Rain fertilized crops, but the sense that its runoff filled the rivers did not figure in the Greek mythic picture.

Ladon (mythology)

Ladon /ˈleɪdən/ (Greek: Λάδων; gen.: Λάδωνος) is the name of a monster in Greek mythology.

Mythology

Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined and twisted around the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. He was overcome by Heracles. The following day, Jason and the Argonauts passed by on their chthonic return journey from Colchis and heard the lament of "shining" Aegle, one of the four Hesperides, and viewed the still-twitching Ladon.

Ladon was given several parentages, each of which placed him at an archaic level in Greek myth: the offspring of "Ceto, joined in heated passion with Phorcys" or of Typhon, who was himself serpent-like from the waist down, and Echidna or of Gaia herself, or Hera: "The Dragon which guarded the golden apples was the brother of the Nemean lion" asserted Ptolemy Hephaestion. In one version, Heracles did not kill Ladon.

The image of the dragon (Ladon) coiled round the tree, originally adopted by the Hellenes from Near Eastern and Minoan sources, is familiar from surviving Greek vase-painting. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias saw among the treasuries at Olympia an archaic cult image in cedar-wood of Heracles and the apple-tree of the Hesperides with the dragon coiled around it.